Sony Ericsson W660i review: Sony Ericsson W660i

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The GoodExcellent battery life. 512MB Memory Stick included. Great suite of music applications. Comfortable form-factor.

The BadYet another Sony Ericsson candy-bar phone. Does not natively sync with Mac OS X.

The Bottom LineLooking as good as it sounds, the Sony Ericsson W660i is an exceptional fusion of 3G handset and music player. However, existing Sony Ericsson users may find little more than a smattering of new applications to tempt them into an upgrade.

Review Sections

The Sony Ericsson W660i is a full-featured, yet no-surprises 3G mobile phone, sporting slick looks, intuitive functionality and a smattering of useful applications. Weighing 93 grams and measuring 102 by 46 by 14.5mm, the Sony Ericsson W660i is pitched as the must-have mobile device for folks who want their music on the move.

Design
The adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" seems to be Sony Ericsson's golden rule, and the Sony Ericsson W660i is certainly a testament to this. Throughout, the handset shares more in common with its predecessors in the K3x, 5x and 6xi series than otherwise, not only sharing a classic candy-bar form-factor, but a near-identical user-interface, button layout and list of features. As much as this may limit any convincing argument as to why existing 3G Sony Ericsson users should upgrade to this new, bells-and-whistles model, it should be known that it does possess a number of defining features that are not only quite useful, but also a lot of fun.

The Sony Ericsson W660i's rounded corners, tactile keypad and matte finish have been sculpted with maximum comfort in mind. One could imagine it to be the brainchild of some illicit mobile phone-using motorist's club (you know who you are), bearing the single goal of crafting a phone that can be wholly utilised using one hand. The keypad is very responsive and easy to the touch. Being a Walkman-branded product, the Sony Ericsson W660i transforms from phone to music player with the press of a button, and likewise into a digital camera. In turn, the four-way keypad can be programmed with shortcuts, taking the repetition out of performing common tasks.

Features
One of the Sony Ericsson W660i's more standout features is the inclusion of an easily-replaceable 512MB Sony Memory Stick Micro, providing ample room for either oodles of photos, or a few music albums. Contrary to old times, a phone-to-USB cable is provided, meaning that you can now transfer files to the handset post-haste, or at least without fooling around with a Bluetooth connection. Considering this is a digital music-oriented phone, this is not only a great improvement over previous models, but a timely feature set. However this said, the largest-capacity Memory Stick Micro currently available in Australia is 2GB, which is certainly not enough to have serious audiophiles considering the purchase of a Sony Ericsson W660i as a viable replacement for their higher-capacity MP3 players.